Yes! With all their stripes lined up.
So dang cute!
….today, on l’ile Aux Moines in the Golfe du Morbihan, along thirty meters or so of footpath, we saw seven lizards. I mention this because in an unprecedentedly hot summer in the UK we saw two.
Oddly those were the only ones that we saw on the island.
Tides are nature, right? The Golfe is huge, has a narrow mouth, and has an extraordinary complex of islands. As the tide runs in or out, all sorts of alarming currents run through the Golfe. It’s the craziest thing - and you can take a cruise through it. Hint: don’t pass on the opportunity.
j
Within the last week or so, the Canada geese have returned to my neighbor’s duck pond. They come in for a short time in the spring and then must head farther north for the summer then they all meet up again in the fall to head out on their winter vacation.
Last weekend they were gathering and practicing like crazy up in Brainerd, MN. I haven’t seen them crossing the Twin Cities yet, but maybe they’ve learned to avoid us. 
Sure it was a sparrow? Great tits and blue tits do this a lot, but sparrows are new to me. Links in German.
Definitely a sparrow. That was mid- pandemic - we had a lot of time on our hands.
j
TIL that sparrows can behave like tits. Observation and recording it is the mother of biology.
Just saw a soap bubble float across my lawn. Nobody in sight was doing anything that would produce a soap bubble, so I’m calling this “nature” in the sense that the wind is nature.
Chickadees, birds I normally see all summer have appeared in the tree outside my porch for the first time since early spring. It’s a hopeful sign that avian flu will leave us alone for a few years.
Took a trip out to Locmariaquer on the Golfe du Morbihan (again!) today, ostensibly to buy a tee shirt and go for a bike ride. Got completely derailed. Walking into the village along the shore we saw a bunch of familiar looking white birds - little egrets… er, some of them look a bit too big?
Mrs T got it in one. Dear Lord, spoonbills, four of them. (First saw a spoonbill about a week ago, reported above).
We watched them till they flew off, way too soon, but two more flew in. I guess we watched that pair for a half hour as they worked the low tide pools. I love the way they wave that big old bill around, like they are showing off.
Made my day.
j
Fabulous. I’m going to drop this location to the friend I used to travel to France with. I can no longer handle the travel, but she goes every year and tours a different part of the country.
My local red shoulder hawk made another appearance outside my office window again yesterday after a long absence. I only had time for a quick, surreptitious snapshot before he ran off. You can really see how diminutive the bird is here, like a smallish chicken or largish quail.
Oh, I forgot to report, the other night when I came home from work there was a bunny in my yard. Notable mostly because it didn’t run off as I pulled up (it couldn’t have been more than ten feet from my car) and didn’t even crouch to hide.
Okay, I probably should get the grass mowed.
But it was cool, when I got outta the car, to stand not far from bun-bun 
and we just calmly regarded each other.
Then I slowly turned, walked into the house, and informed my cat of the news.
A week and a bit ago, in Normandy, I saw this:
That’s an infuriating crop of the photo - click on it to see the full image.
What we have here is a tree, actually growing in a pond and completely surrounded by water, being used as roost by several hundred cattle egrets. This was adjacent to where we were staying. Every night, quite a while before dusk, the roost would start filling up. We would watch small flocks flying in from all directions. Every so often something would kick off, there would be a big hullabaloo, everyone would take off, and the sky would be filled with a huge swarm of birds until they settled back down again. It was a truly amazing spectacle.
It’s the perfect roost site; I couldn’t help but wonder who used to roost there before the cattle egrets ousted them.
j
Here’s a better crop. What I did was right-click on the image in google photos and choose “open image in new tab”, then paste that url into my post.
I wonder whether this link will last, Google seems to assign dynamic addresses to those “new tabs” and after some time the link does not work. Imgur, OTOH, seems to give permanent addresses. We’ll see.
ETA: Great picture, BTW. 
Me too. I’ve tried doing that sort of thing before, and the image was temporary - not sure if it was exactly what you did @squeegee. It was a little while ago.
I’m monitoring this with interest!
Thanks for your efforts @squeegee (fingers crossed). And thanks for your king words, @Pardel-Lux.
j
I wonder how much of an impact that many birds eliminating into the water around that tree. Miracle-Gro?
Driving home from work. I stopped and talked to them for a few minutes.
